I’ve been working at home for going on seven years now, and
now I’m just going to take a minute because holy shit, that’s longer than I’ve
done anything. Wow.
Everyone’s super jealous that I get to work from home, and
sure, it’s got it’s upsides – no getting up at unholy hours, no hellish
commute, less wear and tear on the car, smaller gas budget. But working from
home has its drawbacks, and yes, most of them involve the lack of sick days, vacation days, or other benefits of any kind. There are lots of other
things that you don’t see coming, however, until you're right in the middle of them.
5) You Start Getting Fat
I didn’t really start getting fat until after I moved
back to America, quit smoking, and started taking antidepressants, so I’m 100% certain that those things played a
significant role in my unprecedented weight gain. When you have access to your
kitchen all day long, you have to be careful not to abuse it, because writing
is surprisingly hungry work. I suspect it has something to do with how the
brain needs glucose to function.
Also, when I lived in France, people didn’t show up to my
house with multiple cakes they apparently expected me to sit and eat by myself,
as I
complained about recently. French people don’t try to make you eat yourself
to death, inadvertently or otherwise. As my friend Kelly pointed out, I don’t have an office full of
co-workers who can eat leftover desserts for me. I was going to say those cakes
won’t eat themselves, but I guess they might if I leave them in the fridge long
enough.
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| I'd feed them to the woodland creatures, but you don't want to know what sugar does to that woodchuck. |
4) Running Errands Becomes a Real Mission
When other people need to pick up a jug of milk, they do it
on the way home from work. When I need to pick up a jug of milk, I drink black
coffee for two weeks until I finally break down and make a Special Trip to get a jug of milk. Then I get so irritated over having spent a
huge chunk of my evening driving from my house, in the middle of nowhere, to
the shops, in the middle of somewhere, that I contemplate buying my own cow.
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| Still not any easier, tbh. |
And if I have to go to the bank, well, I don’t go to the
bank. The president of the cat rescue I used to volunteer with can back me up
on that, because I supervised the Sunday adoption events sometimes and collected a
bunch of money in cat adoption fees, and then kept the money at home for two
weeks until the president texted to nag me about it. I can’t stop at the bank
on the way home from work until they open a branch office in my spare bedroom,
which they’re not going to do, no matter how many sternly-worded letters I
write them about it.
3) You Work Your Ass Off, but No One Realizes It
By now you’re probably thinking, “What do you mean you can’t
find time to run errands, you work from home! Why can’t you just go to bank
whenever you want? What do you do all
day?”
Well, in answer to your question, Gentle Reader and/or
People at Bars and/or All of My Extended Relatives, freaking work is what I do all day. Most people appear shocked to discover
that I actually do have to complete
specific assignments by a certain time each day, if I want to keep getting
paid.
I can either run around doing personal errands and meeting
friends and relatives for leisurely lunches, or I can work. There isn’t time in
the average day for both. This is a simple concept that lots of people can’t
seem to grasp when they’re calling me up at 9 a.m. on a Tuesday to see if I can
drop everything and meet them for ice cream. When anyone else says, “Sorry, can’t,
got to work,” it’s accepted without question, but when I say it, it leads to twenty-minute
argument about whether I or not I really need to work at that specific moment.
2) You Have More Pajamas Than Real Clothes
It seems like every freelance-writing, work-from-home-advice
blogger has to write at least seven obligatory posts about how you shouldn’t
work from home in your pajamas. You should put on proper, business-casual
attire, do your hair, put on makeup, and coordinate your accessories. This, the
(presumably) well-meaning bloggers say, will put you in a “businesslike” mood,
make you feel “ready to take on the day,” and ensure that you’re prepared in
case you have to hurry out for a last-minute, emergency client meeting.
Well, if you’re considering getting into freelance writing,
I can tell you that no one really expects you to wear pantsuits. In all the years I've been freelancing, I’ve had to personally meet with a client exactly once, and he was
happy to schedule a meeting at my convenience and did not demand that I hang up
the phone and rush out to meet him in my pajamas. If I needed to wake up an hour earlier to go through the rigmarole
of hair, makeup, and uncomfortable clothes to “get in the mood for work,” I
daresay I would not have what it takes to succeed in this business. Besides, if I'm not getting health insurance, paid time off, or a 401(k), you can bet your sweet ass I'm going to take full advantage of those perks I do have, namely, "wearing whatever I damn well please or nothing at all if that's what strikes my fancy." Screw you, work-from-home-advice bloggers.
Don’t get me wrong; I don’t get out of bed, feed the cats,
and shuffle into my office wearing the same pair of pajamas that you probably
imagine I’ve been wearing for days on end. No, each morning I change out of my
night pajamas and into my day pajamas. That’s a lot of pajamas. And yes, once
in a while I do forget and wear them to Walmart. Whatevs, everyone else in
Walmart is wearing pajamas, too.
1) Dear God, So Lonely
If you’ve never worked from home before, I’m here to tell
you that you don’t realize how important your daily interactions with coworkers
and customers can be when it comes to not going batshit insane. Being anintrovert, I foolishly thought that I’d make a smooth transition to working
from home, alone, in silence, all by myself, all day long, but I took to it
about as well as a fish takes to water when the water is in fact vodka.
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| So...not very well. Image by torbakhopper from Flickr. |
All those little “hellos” and “how are yous” and “would you
like some cakes” add up, man. Of course, having been at this for several years, I can say that once you do go batshit insane, it all gets a lot easier.
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| Mwahaha. |
